Historic Buildings and Gardens

The Church of St. Nectan

Stoke, nr Hartland, Devon EX39 6DU

Tel: 01479 810000

St. Nectan, the patron saint of this church and parish, was one of many Celtic hermits and missionaries associated with early Christian sites in South-West Britain, South Wales and Ireland in the fifth and sixth centuries. The most important feature of the interior is the fifteenth century oak screen, one of the longest and finest in Devon, and unrestored except for some attention to the paintwork and varnish around 1850. It is over 14 metres long and some 3 metres high, with tracery of high quality.

Above the north porch, and entered by a door in the north aisle, is a room traditionally called Pope's Chamber, in which some local antiquities are stored, most notably parts of an early pulpit purchased in 1609 for 30 shillings and recarved in 1629, apparently on the occasion of the death of James I (the pulpit in the church dates from 1848). The room contained a fireplace and may have been used by a priest or sexton, and to store the parish armour in Elizabethan and Stuart times.

The church as we have it is in the Perpendicular style of the fourteenth century, subject to restoration, particularly the windows, in 1848. Although situated some 3 kilometres from the village of Hartland, the centre of the manor, the church is one of the largest in this part of Devon, Hartland parish being in the top ten percent of Devon parishes by population till the 17th century.

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